Arab-Americans

Under suspicion

Worried about a country to which they fled as a safe haven

AS AMERICAN soldiers fan out across the Iraqi desert, government troops of another sort are fanning out across America. Under Operation Liberty Shield, FBI agents have conducted about 5,200 “voluntary” interviews with Iraqi-born people over the past two weeks. Another 6,000 chats are planned with Iraqi-Americans in their homes and workplaces. So far nobody has declined.

APDearborn prays for understanding

Iraqis in America seem to have a schizophrenic approach to the war. Few support Saddam Hussein; plenty, including the Shia Muslims who fled after the 1991 war, have suffered at his hands. Yet most seem to oppose what they see as an unnecessary invasion. They worry about their families, and they see a double standard in America's treatment of Iraq and Israel, which has also ignored some United Nations resolutions.

In the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, which contains America's largest Iraqi community, “most people are ducking for cover,” says Ismael Ahmed, the executive director of ACCESS, a local social-services agency. Business is off at the restaurants along Warren Avenue.

Mixed feelings capture the mood of many other Arab-Americans. A general sense of helplessness is about the only thing that brings together such a heterogeneous group. The 2000 census lists 1.3m Arab-Americans (roughly double the number in 1980), although some estimates put the number three times that high. About 70% of them are Christian, though the more recent immigrants are Muslims.

Are they right to be worried? Reports of possible hate crimes, such as a recent explosion in front of a Palestinian home in Chicago, have been seized upon. But there is no evidence of any national increase in such attacks since the war began. After September 11th, George Bush condemned any attacks on Arab-Americans.

Now, however, the talk is less of Mr Bush's words than his attorney-general's actions. Since John Ashcroft's USA Patriot Act was passed in October 2001, there has been a spate of arrests, deportations and interviews in Dearborn. Arab-Americans are now worried about a draft version of “Patriot II”, which, they say, would permit secret arrests, secret evidence in trials and other things that many of them once fled.

As for Operation Liberty Shield, which is supervised by the new Homeland Security Department, some Arab-Americans seem to accept interviews with Iraqis as justifiable in a time of war. They are more worried about the power Liberty Shield gives the government to detain for up to six months asylum-seekers from countries “where al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda sympathisers, and other terrorist groups are known to have operated”. The government has not said which countries are covered, but the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights reckons the policy applies to 33 countries, including not only Iraq and Iran but also Thailand and Bangladesh.

More encouragingly, other parts of the government are trying to woo Arab-Americans. The State Department has recruited Iraqis for a “Future of Iraq Project” to help plan the rebuilding of their homeland. The Pentagon has recruited thousands of Iraqi exiles to work as interpreters and prison guards. A steady stream of senior officials from both the State Department and the Pentagon, including Paul Wolfowitz, have visited Michigan to meet exiles there.

But for the moment the mood is bleak—even when it comes to entertainment. “I'm one of 12 Arab comedians in America,” deadpans Ray Hanania, a stand-up comic. “But all the others are in jail.”